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Group surveys Ruidoso health impact from Trinity bomb blast

The Trinity Site opened its gate to the public last weekend, a chance that only comes twice a year, to stand on the spot where scientists of the top secret Manhattan Project detonated the first atomic bomb.

The Trinity Site opened its gate to the public last weekend, a chance that only comes twice a year, to stand on the spot where scientists of the top secret Manhattan Project detonated the first atomic bomb.

(Photo: Dave Tomlin/Ruidoso News)

(Photo: Dave Tomlin/Ruidoso News)

Tina Cordova was standing by the Stallion Gate entrance on U.S. 380 Saturday morning with about a dozen fellow protestors, hoping to remind visitors that people from Ruidoso to Socorro still suffer from what they may not even realize are the after-effects of the explosion.

The successful test blast in July 1945 hastened victory in World War II. But it also spread a toxic cloud of radioactive ash over rural communities across southern and central New Mexico. Census figures indicate more than 40,000 people lived within 50 miles of ground zero.

"People in this region lived very organic lives in the 1940s, exactly the way people strive to do today," Cordova said. "But that healthy lifestyle affected them in the worst way possible."

Radioactive debris entered the soil and groundwater, contaminated crops, wildlife and livestock and fell directly on people as far away as Ruidoso, where astonished campers have recounted memories of what seemed like snow falling from the sky in mid-summer.

Cordova is co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, which has been fighting for a decade to get federal authorities to acknowledge the cancer and auto-immune disorders that have afflicted not only those who actually saw the first mushroom cloud, but also their children and grandchildren.

Cordova lost her father and several other family members to cancer and is herself a thyroid cancer survivor.

"The radiation exposure from Trinity was 10,000 times what would be considered acceptable today," she said. "For example the normal occurrence of brain tumors is one per 5,000 people. I can name ten people with brain tumors in Tularosa, a town of 2,700 people."

The Consortium has been documenting the impact, assembling memories and family health histories from everyone it can locate who might have been directly exposed or has relatives who were affected.

A Consortium volunteer was in Ruidoso on Sept. 23 at the senior center to collect information. Only a small handful of people showed up to speak with her, but Cordova said her group hopes to return later this month to try again.

The Consortium is pushing for federal compensation for victims. The 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has paid out more than $2 billion to people affected by later nuclear tests in Nevada and Utah. An amendment currently stalled in Congress would extend the law to cover New Mexico.

The group also wants federal funds released for a U.S. Centers for Disease Control study of Trinity's health impact. The CDC has already documented the severe effects of nuclear waste disposal by the Manhattan Project in and around Los Alamos. That CDC report noted that the effects of the Trinity blast should also be studied.

Cordova said the injustice of ignoring the harm from Trinity has gone on too long, and there should be congressional hearings in Tularosa.

"They need to hear firsthand about the immorality associated with this," she said.